WHATEVER the causes of the blaze that engulfed Bradford City's ground, its legacy transformed the game as a spectator sport

Thirty years ago on May 11, Martin Fletcher lost his grandfather, father and little brother. They were three of the 56 people killed in a fire at Valley Parade, Bradford City Football Club's home ground; 256 others, including Martin, were injured. Now, almost three decades after the tragedy, he wants a new investigation into what happened that day.

After painstakingly combing through newspaper archives going back 20 years he claims to have found eight other fires at business premises owned by or connected to Stafford Heginbotham, the chairman of Bradford City on the day that the stand caught fire. One of his premises, Douglas Mills, caught fire not once but twice - in 1977 and then again in 1981.

In his new book, 56: The Story Of The Bradford Fire, Mr Fletcher alleges that as a result of these fires Mr Heginbotham - who died in 1995 aged 61 - racked up insurance payouts worth £27million in today's money. While no specific allegations about the former chairman's role in the fires have been made, the book's implication is unmistakable.

Mr Heginbotham was in dire financial straits with the club struggling to make ends meet. Just two days before the fire it was slapped with a hefty bill to bring the stadium up to the safety standards required of a club that had just won promotion to the old Second Division and there were already fears that staff could not be paid beyond the end of the month.

Gerry Sutcliffe, deputy leader of Bradford Council at the time, described Mr Heginbotham as somebody who would "fly by the seat of his pants" when it came to settling bills.

After the disaster the club received insurance money as well as £1.4million from the local council and further funds from the Football Trust. In all, according to the club's vice-chairman at the time Jack Tordoff, they received £200,000 more than they needed to rebuild the stadium.

West Yorkshire Police have said they will investigate any new evidence arising from Fletcher's book but it has not gone down well with those connected to the tragedy. Mr Heginbotham's son James described the allegations as "sickening" and said that the claims are "tarnishing the names of the 56". Mr Tordoff described Mr Heginbotham as a "likeable rogue" but added that Stafford "would not do anything like that. It is absolutely ridiculous."

John DEWHIRST, cofounder of Bradford's City Gent fanzine, also dismissed Mr Fletcher's claims.

He said it "was common knowledge there had been mill fires. But it is stretching the imagination to believe the guy would do something like that."

The judge who chaired the official inquiry into the disaster described it as "nonsense". Oliver Popplewell claimed that the stand under which the fire started had no insurance value because it was due to be demolished and that the area was examined by experienced fire investigators who found nothing untoward. But he acknowledged that police should investigate the claims to "see if there was anything sinister".

His inquiry found that the fire began as a result of a match, a still-lit cigarette or some burning pipe tobacco falling through the gaps between the seats on to litter piled up under the main stand, which had been unaltered since its construction in 1911. Among the rubbish underneath it, retrieved after, was a local newspaper dating back to 1968.

The club had repeatedly been warned about the fire risk. The stand was made of wood, its roof covered with tarpaulin and sealed with asphalt and bitumen. It went up in flames in four minutes. There were no fire extinguishers in the passageways and fans trying to get out of exits at the back found most of them locked or shut. Had the ground had the high fences between stand and pitch that were typical of the era the death toll could have reached thousands.

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Martin Fletcher escaped the fire but lost his grandfather, father and little brother to it

The Valley Parade fire was one of a series of terrible events at football grounds that transformed the sport. The Popplewell Inquiry recommended banning the construction of new wooden stands, closing down those deemed unsafe and banning smoking in old wooden stands.

The Bradford fire was shortly followed by the Heysel disaster, when on May 29 in the same year 39 football fans were killed at the Belgian stadium when a wall collapsed before the European Cup final between Juventus and Liverpool. Then on April 15, 1989, 96 Liverpool fans were killed at Hillsborough stadium in Shef-field, crushed to death while their team played Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup semi-final.

After Heysel stricter rules were introduced to keep out the hooligans. After Hillsborough, and the Taylor Report, clubs in the top two divisions were required to have all-seater stadiums while pitchside fencing was removed and CCTV cameras introduced.

In just a few years football was transformed - and not just its grounds. The change in the sport was exemplified by the change from the old First Division to the Premiership in 1992, and the first of the TV deals that has since brought billions of pounds into the game. Whatever started the fire that day it began a chain of events that have made football almost unrecognisable from the sport Martin Fletcher's lost relatives enjoyed so much.